So you’ve bought a nice big 1080P HD TV and a Blu-ray player. You’ve hooked it all up to your 5.1 amplifier, which didn’t suck last year, and you put in an action flick. It looks amazing, but it sounds a little flat. You might even convince yourself that it sounds good, but it doesn’t. In fact, you’re audio might actually be worse than if you were watching that movie on a regular old DVD.
Even if you think 7.1 is an over-kill and are happy with 5.1, there is a catch-22 that might prevent you from getting 5.1 unless you upgrade to 7.1.
One area of my home theatre that’s always been lacking has been my sound. I’ll admit that as a professional film and television editor, I’ve been more of a videophile than an audiophile. But a few weeks ago I set out to upgrade to a total-solution 7.1 system including some new speakers for under a grand. I only went over by a couple hundred dollars. Getting it done around that budget wasn’t an easy task – and neither was some of the wiring. There were several bumps along the way. But the process revealed a lot that I didn’t know about the new audio formats, what it takes to actually hear them, the crap I’ve been settling for, the awesomeness of 7.1 audio, the unfortunate truth about Blu-ray and 7.1 and much more. Buckle-up because this whole thing can be a bit convoluted.
Tags: Audio, bluray, HD, HDMI, Home Video
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